Minecraft 1.2 update now available

Minecraft version 1.2 is now officially released. Technically, Minecraft update 1.2.1 is a compilation of all of the weekly snapshots since Minecraft 1.1 "packed into one" major update.

Of course, those weekly snapshots were considered more like pre-releases, and as such probably contained a few bugs. Mojang has since fixed all of them (hopefully) and released them all in this newest update.

Some of the Minecraft 1.2 features include:

New jungle biome

Added ocelots

Added cats

Added iron golems

New AI for mobs

Tame wolves can have puppies

Villagers will have children if there is room in their village

New map height limit (256 instead of 128)

New items and blocks

Doors have been updated so that double-doors work better with redstone

Added rare drops for mobs

Many other minor tweaks and fixes

In addition, the Minecraft launcher has been updated. According to lead developer Jens Bergensten, the new launcher should properly select 64 bit Java installations for Mac OS X users.

While the Minecraft 1.2 preview yesterday had to be downloaded and installed manually, today's official update will be downloaded automatically from the Minecraft launcher.